On 5 December 2013, EA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Arab Accreditation.
ARAC was launched in June 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. ARAC’s current membership includes 14 Arab Accreditation bodies in Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Oman, Palestine, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania & Yemen. As one of the main pillars of the Pan Arab quality infrastructure, ARAC cooperates in building capacity in accreditation across the Arab World with the goal of sustaining an internationally acceptable mutual recognition arrangement.
The purpose of the ARAC – EA MoU is to record an understanding between ARAC and EA on their working relationship so as to achieve the scope of the MoU, which sits beside the roles and responsibilities that both parties already have towards each other, arising from their memberships in ILAC and IAF. Areas of cooperation will include training and development, peer evaluations (ARAC needs to qualify a pool of peer evaluators), information exchange, support in technical matters and adoption of common positions on issues of mutual interest.
The ARAC – EA MoU builds upon the consideration that cooperation will be of mutual benefit for the growth of accreditation in Arab countries and in Europe, as well as the need to foster the development of national, regional, interregional and global schemes for the operation and recognition of reliable accreditation programs.